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I specifically accused 91 of intellectual dishonesty. I even made it clear that I was specifically targeting 91. There is even a history where I have previously claimed that I believed that 91 was being intellectually dishonest. Even at one point, I have refused to speak further to 91 because I regarded him as too intellectually dishonest.

If you want to misinterpret my statement in a manner that ignores my writing, the context, and even the history of the matter, then that is your right. If you persist, then that is something we can call "intellectual dishonesty", however, if you respond to my fact-based correction by taking the appropriate steps, then we can regard this as a one time mistake.


I pointed it at 91. If that's the "thisaway" you speak of, then I did that. If specifically accusing 91 is not the "thisaway" then I did not point that finger "thisaway".


91 isn't focusing on the use of empirical data, but rather relies on cosmological theories, so "seeing differently" makes this a bit difficult. I focus more on empirical data, but usually that of a scientific sort. I guess I can recognize your point though, in that epistemologies vary based upon experience, certainly this is probably true given the neuroscience of it all, as given a connectionist model, we should expect that feedback mechanisms will create different approaches. I also recognize that nobody is all-seeing.

As for your claim about "seeing things", look, that kind of argument doesn't hold a lot of weight. We're both people who have existed on both sides of the matter. You may have cursed the cosmos and found your way into a chapel, and I've prayed to let Jesus into my heart and then later found that the spiritual fruit was rotten.

Honestly, philologos, if you want to deal with this issue, you have to recognize that I am not the only person making that accusation. 91 also is basically stating the exact same thing. Pointing the finger at me, when I am continually accused of failing to understand, already being refuted, and also being intellectually dishonest, is a bit of a flaw. If you want to make your speech on "neither side is angelic or demonic", then be consistent in the application.

I apologize if I seem relatively defensive here, part of the issue is that you seem to be attempting to hold the middle, while your approach tends to show that you favor a specific side of the matter, and have the biases of that side. (I believe my earlier statement of dishonesty was clear, but you seem to think it was a lot broader than it was, which.... is the sort of interpretive mistake an enemy is likely to make.)

" How many times have you guys decided to simply attack the theists and what now you’re surprised and indignant that one would respond.

Honestly, the real issue is that we consider you deeply intellectually dishonest. "

We need to continue this in Latin or as who was it said here practicew "y'all"

Going from your "we consider you" in response to 91's "you guys decided to simply attack the theists", I hope you will recognize that there is a number ambiguity here.

Given that you intended "we consider thee", please accept my apology for misunderstanding.

It is for 91 to respond to "we consider thee deeply intellectually dishonest". Should he throw an intellectual dishonesty at me, I will call him on it. Hasn't happened yet.

And I will say that when you are being serious [and neither of us is always and only serious] you ap;pear to be ass intellectually honest as the law allows, which I will not say of everyone here and which I appreciate.

As for ends and middles and ways and means:

I am a Universal Heretic by nature, in religion a longtime atheist [somewhere around Agnostic Not Otherwise Specified, never antitheist] turned Nicene Christian Not Otherwise Specified]. I am a genetically programed skeptic who has operated most of my life as a scientist [mainly but NOT exclusively Descriptive and Comparative Linguistics] in and out of academia.

I always see arguments on both sides an issue, and on the theism issue I see them the more having been on both sides. I am highly perturbed by the prevalence of peer reviewed PC lockstep spitback in most sciences, not least my own and much of theology, which I think comes from letting genetically predestined sheep and goats run the ranch, marginalizing shepherd and sheepdog.

I have factored in data that for the past whatever keep my reality checks coming up on the theistic side. Many of those data are not public or publishable. If I have a side, it is the side of sensible skepticism and - if you will - intellectual honesty. I have no use for the antitheist who does not bother to find out what Buddhism claims but spews web-spawned drivel uncritically. I have no use for the theist who does not even know what his creed actually says but parrots the televangelist.

Why does it seem that when people wish to ignore what each other have to say that one or more has to, almost inevitably, start using ad hominems?

"I say this"

"I contradict that"

"You're so stupid for contradicting this, it's so plain for me to see and accept, so your mind must be broken somehow"

"My mind isn't broken, dude, I contradict you about that again"

"How can people like this be alive, you are so stupid. This ought to be self evident, so you're obviously insane in some manner"

"No, I'm not insane, stop putting the focus on me you despicable waste of time! I contradict you again"

"What!? I'm a despicable waste of time?! No, rather you're the one wasting my time arguing against that which has been proven and accepted by everyone I have decided to respect, and since you don't accept it I don't respect you!! ! !#%!#$%#&#%^@#%^@^$@#&@$^@"

"WHAT THE FRIBBLE? This is so wrong on so many levels"

"See, I must be right because you haven't proven me wrong!! ! "

"Whatever, have fun talking to yourself".

the people on this forum aren't noted for their grand intelligance

Actually, Asperger's carries along with it the necessity of having at least above average puzzle solving intelligence, although communications-wise in terms of the etymology of the word "intelligent" it is quite easy to say "De verbis eorum ei non intelligent".

I more meant in the sense of debating and the like, they really seem to have lost that skill

I think being this is an Asperger's site (rather than a political, philosophical, or religious sectarian site) you have a much more radical spread of beliefs so, its much harder to tack down a single thing in common to work a debate from with such people. If its a forum for a particular belief or idea and debating its merits, it will be more smooth and high level than if its a "Diabetic Politics, Philosophy, and Religion" or "Sickle Cell Politics, Philosophy, and Religion", groups this broad and psychologically unrelated may have a hard time getting everyone to agree that the moon is round or that the sky is blue let alone which aspects or news or revelation history are true or fictitious.

The sky is not always blue, so this is false. Now let me inundate you with a lot of other tangentially relevant facts about Raleigh scattering, who Raleigh was, and why lasers are awesome.

[RESPONSE INTENDED TO BE RECEIVED AS HUMOROUSLY CONCURRING]

The sky is NOT blue - it is an optical illusion. Same for the sea and the bluebird of happiness.

The sky varies considerably in color but the light frequency of blue is quite common. All color is merely a nervous system response to different light frequencies and in no way should be confused with illusion.

Are we providing enough proof of techstepgener8tion's post yet?

Yes but the component of sunlight corresponding to the blue frequency scatters more than any other component of the light from the sun.

Please see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh_Scattering

It would have been interesting to see what the sky looked like 3 or 4 billion years ago. Back then our sun was much cooler than it is now and there was less blue in the light radiated out because the black-body temperature of the soon was that much less so the sky would have look yellowish orange rather than blue.

ruveyn

Once more, thank you for stepping in. Precisely my point.

Lol, and I knew both of those were great for all kinds of mileage. Not only is it inherently blue or did he mean 'looks' blue during standard daytime, not sunset nor eclipse to human eyes? Didn't answer that for ya? And the moon.....did he mean relatively round? Perfectly round? Left that open as well . Think I might need to get some really big and wild concrete/alabaster wings plastered to the back wall of my office one of these days like Al Pacino.

AG

In relation to the teleological argument, you seem to be stating that the design does not matter because we expect to see a different sort of universe. Despite the fact that I have challenged you repeatedly to address the evidence in the cosmology, you seem to continuously retreat behind your own expectations of what a universe should look like. This position you have taken seems solely dependent on the scale of the universe as it presently exists. It essentially revolves around the argument that the scale and God are logically incompatible. The question I have asked you is what is the value of efficiency when the maker is omnipotent? I mean, God is not limited in resources, why act in an efficient way. The statement of scale can also be taken down with another logical argument. What would God do if he wanted to remind humans of his utter power? One thing he could do is make a very large universe. We could also not be the only plan that he has running at the moment. The problem with my mentioning these things is that, while they may not be true, they do undermine your argument, since by demonstrating that God could have legitimate reasons (without resorting to the reasons an omnipotent being could have without us knowing about, which outnumber the ones we do know about), I can prove that scale and teleology are not logically incompatible. In this way you retreat behind a burden of proof you cannot really sustain, since your argument here is one of absolute incompatibility, one need only demonstrate logical compatibility to disprove it.

In relation to the Kalam argument. In our discussion of this argument you have placed yourself in a position where the only universe you are prepared to accept exists, is one that is eternal in the past. I find this quite intellectually dishonest, since the disproof you used to argue against me on this subject was one that relates to universes that are subject to inflation. Considering that you argued against the Kalam argument by citing Chaotic inflation theory and are now crying foul that my argument disproves only inflationary universes (these sort represent the vast majority of those posited by the cosmological community) is intellectually dishonest. As to your statements relating to Hilbert, once again pin you in behind something which makes your argument less persuasive, according to him, infinity exists only as a concept and can be found nowhere in the real world. As to the Penrose article, it is difficult to argue against something which is current in the scientific discourse. If all you have to defend your argument is a hope in this one particular form of universe existing you should seriously ask yourself if you really are making a case from a position of reason. I for one am quite happy to admit, that I have a presupposition towards a universe where God exists, as a person who believes in God, it is no surprise to me that present cosmology almost universally shares a view of the present universe that favors an uncaused cause.

In relation to the moral argument. Recently you have attempted to disprove this by using the argument that we have no free will. I used the work of Polkinghorn to demonstrate to you how one stating something along the lines of ‘I have no free will’ is a self-defeating statement. Now I may not have argued this in the most persuasive way, but that does not really undermine my basic point. You have also bought up the Euthyphro dilemma again, considering the fact that we went through this at length and I demonstrated repeatedly (not to mention I also had to demonstrate divine simplicity repeatedly) how this is not applicable to the Christian conception of God, I find this fundamentally dishonest. In this argument you are also once again pushing yourself in behind the need to demonstrate a burden of proof that you cannot really do. Despite all of your attempts to state why people do not have free will you cannot really state that the issue is settled or can be here. I will continue to believe that I have free will until the matter is put beyond all doubt, reasonable or otherwise. I think the average person would be a skeptic in relation to this information. Even Daniel Dennett, shares this view, he does not really want to know if free will exists or not and has even gone so far as to suggest the limiting of free inquiry on the matter since he views it as an answer mankind universally does not want to know the answer to. If you however want to place this view at the centre of your argument, then that is for you, I cannot say that this makes that worldview any more attractive though.

As to the question of Evil. As is now your apparent habit, you have retreated behind an argument with an absurdly high burden of proof. You have argued that God ‘could not’ have a reason for the level of evil that exists in the world. The problem with this is quite obvious, it’s a totally incompatibilist position on the matter and as such can be disproven simply by showing that it is not logically sound. God could have a reason for the level of evil in the world, it may be known to us or not. As to the reasons that are known to us, such as, life is relatively short in relation to the time the saved will spend in heaven, the aim of life is to know God not necessarily to be happy (though the Holy Spirit manifests itself as joy, you probably do not have a clue what I am talking about here), most of the evil in the world is the result of human free will, the knowledge of God is an incomparable good and many others. This does not even go into the reasons that an omnipotent being might have but that we do not know about. On this subject you have simply said that an omnipotent being just could not have such a reason, since you are not omnipotent, I cannot see this position being as being logically jusfied and essentially unprovable.

As to the cosmological argument from contingency. This is the argument that you have kind of steered away from. In my opinion it is the best argument for God. It simply is ‘why does anything exist instead of nothing’. Nowhere in the naturalistic worldview is there an answer to this question. The universe does not exist out of necessity, no cosmologist or philosopher worth their salt will state this, mostly due to the burden of proof attached to it and so it goes unanswered.

On the ontological argument. Let me once again explain why it simply cannot explain everything. If you look at premise two of the modal form of the argument I put forward in my last post. Please look at premise 2, maximal greatness. A possibility that God does not exist, does not have maximal greatness in any sense that it could exist in all possible worlds. The fact that the argument you put forward was one from the possibility of God not existing a possible world does not meet the criteria of the second premise. In fact when that argument is put though the modal form, it creates a feedback from the possibility that God does exist and destroys itself. In order to run a universal negative of maximal greatness though the ontological argument, you must first start with a premise of ‘it is not possible that God exists in this world’ and then it can be argued successfully. However by doing this you would be taking an incompatibilist position and retreating behind a massive burden of proof.

Well, that's one of my rebuttals. Another rebuttal is that even out of supernatural hypotheses, God is not most justified. Another rebuttal is that the design argument has not done much to show that design is necessary, as you mostly just dismissed the idea of multiverses rather than addressing it.

For the most part, I don't care about "logical compatibility". If we don't have good reason to suspect God given some data, and we have other hypotheses open, then picking another hypothesis is the logical choice.

I am still going to have to rebut that when evaluating the idea that a rational actor did something, it is important to show that the action makes sense for a rational actor. This action does not have a lot recommending it, as there is a lot that is irrelevant to the motive. As for "showing mankind His power" we both know that this is not necessary, mankind was more enamored of the power of God before we knew how large the universe was. Making a very large universe, instead makes the human position look small in the scheme of things, despite the fact that if God exists, we are central. This is why it is unexpected if God exists. We can think of a lot of ideas about God wanting X, Y, and Z, but they are mostly just ad hoc excuses.

Your point about "burden of proof" is silly. You seem to reinterpret everything into a deductive logical argument, when I don't usually express much interest in deductive arguments. Deductive arguments in philosophy seem less believable than inductive ones, as deductive arguments are usually also more abstract, and rely more heavily on the construction of the premises.


No I haven't. I am skeptical towards cosmological speculation. I haven't stated "I believe the universe is eternal" anywhere. That isn't even my style. I just believe that eternality is more plausible than the Kalam.


Y'know, appealing to possibilities that show that your argument isn't as strong as you think it is, isn't exactly much of a commitment. I haven't committed to anything. I have committed to the idea that the Kalam is weak because we have a lot of other possibilities. That's all I have committed to, and you haven't shown otherwise. What I think you fail to recognize is that I am not relying so much on logically deductive arguments, I am not holding myself to many absolute positions either. I am not wed to any notion of cosmology, I only find the notion of God as an explanation to be rather ludicrous. This is especially true given that I reject the simplicity of God, and I see the invocation of God as a massive ontological assumption.


I sided with Zeno over Hilbert. I don't see what the problem is with this and infinitesimals are the foundation of Calculus. The basic point here is mathematical though, not related to science.

I never cited a Penrose article. You are thinking of Master_Pedant.

Also, there is no reason to have to "hope". You're trying to use an incredibly speculative field to argue that something really extraordinary, but the evidence is all just speculation. I have no reason to believe very much coming out of cosmology, period. The field isn't much of an empirical field, and so many conclusions are derived from theory.


I am arguing from the empirics. If we have a philosophical argument that disagrees with a body of empirical studies, I am outright going to throw out the philosophy. Even further, I don't find any of the position that credible, anyway, it goes too far.


And I find it fundamentally dishonest that you don't recognize that simplicity has a lot of problems due to the nature of cognition, as well as the fact that most accounts of simplicity lead to a conflation of ideas, such as that God's justice IS his mercy. As keeping the two separate means that God cannot be his nature, as it would entail that God instead has a nature made up of differing and perhaps even conflicting essences.


Y'know, I don't really think much of your use of "burden of proof", especially given that you just assert that there is a high burden of proof based upon a misinterpretation to begin with.


I actually do think it has been settled as much as it needs to be.


So, you are saying that you are dogmatic? That's good to know.


I wasn't aware that worldviews were supposed to just be pretty. I really don't care what Dan Dennett thinks, his view of the mind is pretty close to entirely incompatible with any notion of free will that would maintain your free will defense. You have to recognize that anything less than whole-hog libertarianism gives God more than sufficient ability to control what every being does. I also am willing to put this view as pretty central, given that my entire view of mind tends to go this direction anyway. The evidence against that classical view you seem to want to be true seems very compelling to me.



More that reasons for the level of evil that exists are so wildly implausible that they don't deserve to be taken seriously. That position is not an absurdly high burden of proof, as it can be observed by the rather crappy reasons given for the existence of evil. You're reframing what I say into something it isn't, and then holding that this position that I haven't really put myself into is ridiculous. I almost have to wonder if this is just a cognitive oddity on your part, you seem to consistently do this, when in most things, I don't ever put myself into those kinds of boxes with those black and white positions on the matter.


You misunderstand what I was arguing.

The problem is with "Maximal Greatness". If God is by definition "maximally great", and "maximal greatness" entails that God exists in all possible worlds, then God not existing in a possible world is a disproof of God.

Period.

I'm not making that stupid burden of proof mistake either.

I was thinking about not responding, but because I had regained some patience, and because you are still in error, I decided to respond. I am not responded again though, period.